What a Military Supply Depot Contains

[Christopher R. Rice]

For one of my games the PCs have found a National Guard supply depot in the States. What might it contain. I currently have:

• Ammo (but how much?)
• Weapons (ditto)
• Food (both MREs and bulk shelf stable food to be cooked)
• A couple of humvees

I've also decided they have a barracks, small machine shop, and of course supply buildings.

What am I missing? References to GURPS books with equipment a huge plus. A little help would be most appreciated.

[Farmer]

• First Aid and possibly more advanced medical supplies.

• Fuel (for vehicles, generator)

• Camouflage netting and similar

• Repair manuals, guides, other information

• Uniforms, webbing, packs, etc.

• Tools for specific and general repairs and maintenance

[Taneli]

Would it have a space that could be used as a bunker?

[WingedKagouti]

The depot will also have enough trucks to transport the attached squads as well as some supplies for field operations. The exeption is if it's so small there's only a single squad present, but I find that unlikely if the depot is large enough to have a repair shop.

Depending on size and distance to the nearest town, there may be a cafeteria/mess hall on site. Even a single-squad depot will at the very least have a kitchen and pantry. MREs are only used in the field. They may be edible, but they're not good for morale in non-combat situations.

A well stocked supply depot will have a large variety of spare parts for whatever weapons, vehicles, machinery and electronics are used by the garrison. They will likely not have everything and expensive components are likely to be missing or in low supply. Depending on the nature of them, fragile components may either be in abundance (for relatively cheap stuff that's expected to break) or non-existant (due to contracts and/or cost of individual components).

Spare parts for weapons will likely be enough to fully repair a large amount of the weapons expected to be in use. For vehicles expect enough major parts to fully repair at least one of each type of vehicle, but not much more than that. Small spare parts for vehicles are likely plentiful unless highly expensive.

As far as "how many" weapons, a rifle for each private and sergeant and a sidearm for each officer. Depending on the size and purpose of the garrison there will be an amount of specialized weapons (sniper rifles, mortars, etc.), a sniper rifle will as a general rule replace a standard rifle, while mortars and other such weapons will often be considered additions to a squad and not replace basic rifles. There will likely be enough spare rifles for a single squad. For weapons not in use at a well organized site, expect the firing mechanism to be stored separately (and under lock) from the rest of the weapon.

Depending on the size of the garrison, the ammo on site could fit in a small van or it could require several large vehicles. Actual amounts are almost certainly a military secret, but an estimate would be "enough to carry out an operation fit for the garrison's size". The security of the ammo depot can vary a lot (politics, location, leadership, etc.), but always expect it to be the most secure building (or room) on site unless there is something like a presidential bunker present.

But all that assumes a competent quartermaster and commanding officer.

[Phantasm]

Don't forget computer systems which give a complete inventory of the depot, including where each pallet and vehicle - all numbered, of course - is located and the destination, if already known. Very good chance that there are laptops and radio equipment in storage at the depot as well.

There will also be a "junk pile" or more accurately a series of dumpsters where wooden pallets, broken equipment, etc. are tossed

Also, there is a very good chance there are other vehicles there as well. A few MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) slated to replace Hummers are likely, as are a number of cargo trucks (used to transport to and from the depot) and armor recovery vehicles. In an extreme case, you'll have tanks, Bradleys, LAVs, APCs, and DPVs sitting there waiting to be deployed either to military or National Guard bases.

This may help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_Armed_Forces


For ammunition, you can expect hundreds of pallets of each type, with the standard ball ammunition being most common. Each pallet will likely have twenty to thirty cases of a hundred rounds each. (Rough guestimate.)

[sjard]

It's going to heavily vary by type of depot, importance of depot, etc.

I grew up visiting what is an ostensibly national guard depot that my grandfather (and several uncles) were stationed at. I only later learned that it was the primary ordnance supply depot for much of the western US.

There were (and still are) many miles of ammo bunkers, that included, at the time, roughly 40% of the US stock of chemical weapons (most have been destroyed by this point in time, a project that took nearly 20 years).

There was, and probably still is, a rather large supply of conventional munitions along with other sundry supplies.

The visible part of the base is fairly small, perhaps enough for a company. But the less visible part stretches far enough to border on a much larger national guard base (and oddly state police academy), 40ish miles away.

To make it more interesting, the supply depot is nestled between two air force bombing ranges.

Maybe that can give you some ideas to play with as well.

Edit: At a guess, unclass, I'm aware of several sections of a hundred bunkers assigned to mortar, howitzer, etc. that would be packed floor to ceiling. An aerial image of just the area nearest the visible base.

[zoncxs]

4 Humvees per platoon.

1 m4 per soldier
1 pistol per officer
at least 1 m247 per team
at least 1 grenade launcher per team
radio supplies
tent supplies
MREs
clothing supplies
manuals for using all this stuff
lockers for each solider with what ever they leave there, usually all the gear they would need to deploy like flic, pouches, extra boots, bulletproof vest, etc.
computers/laptops


what would not be there: Ammo.

Ammo is held at a separate facility that handles only ammo.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

The depot will also have enough trucks to transport the attached squads as well as some supplies for field operations. The exeption is if it's so small there's only a single squad present, but I find that unlikely if the depot is large enough to have a repair shop.

Depending on size and distance to the nearest town, there may be a cafeteria/mess hall on site. Even a single-squad depot will at the very least have a kitchen and pantry. MREs are only used in the field. They may be edible, but they're not good for morale in non-combat situations.

If you do the math, it takes a minimum of 12 people working 40 hours a week (with time off for vacation, sick leave, and some off-site training) to keep two people on duty 24 hours a day; this assumes that the first-line supervisor will fill in for a subordinate that is sick or on leave. So, unless you just need two people to man the gate, the security of a depot will be at least a company-equivalent (~ 100 personnel). It may be contract security guards or an administrative military unit rather than a tactical formation, however.

Then the depot needs people to run all its material-handling equipment (forklifts, etc.) to unload supplies as they arrive or move them around as needed. With headquarters, figure the minimum is several hundred people assigned to the depot, most of them working weekday schedules.

On-base housing is very expensive to run and only technically needed for unmarried junior military personnel, so unless the depot is beyond commuting distance (up to ~ 60 miles) from the nearest town, there probably won't be much of anyone actually living on the base -- the depot commander and ops/chief of staff (in historic brick houses) and newly arrived junior enlisted who haven't found an apartment in town.

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Don't forget computer systems which give a complete inventory of the depot, including where each pallet and vehicle - all numbered, of course - is located and the destination, if already known. Very good chance that there are laptops and radio equipment in storage at the depot as well.

This is a place where you would be justified in throwing obstacles at the player characters. In my experience, automated supply systems are frequently the last dying place of obsolete, legacy (e.g. -- no joke -- DOS 3.0-based) computer systems and proprietary hardware. Upgrades are decades apart, because it's so traumatic to move everything to a new system. The new system, which was a compromise designed by committee and provided by the lowest bidder, was probably obsolete before it was fielded because it took so long to implement. And the cycle starts all over again.

The logisticians who use the system are resigned to its quirks and know the work-arounds to get the most out of it. Anyone else who comes in expecting to turn it on and go is likely in for a rude shock.

Similar comments apply to the organization and labeling of the depot itself. I have yet to see a depot (even, or perhaps especially, a small one) with all the bunkers clearly labelled on a plan which is posted in plain sight and with matching numbers on the bunkers themselves. More often, the bunkers are (e.g.) labelled with their building number in the facilities database (3361), but the supply software refers to them by block letter and serial number (A-44). The logisticians know what goes where because they do it every day, but no one else does.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by thrash

This is a place where you would be justified in throwing obstacles at the player characters. In my experience, automated supply systems are frequently the last dying place of obsolete, legacy (e.g. -- no joke -- DOS 3.0-based) computer systems and proprietary hardware. Upgrades are decades apart, because it's so traumatic to move everything to a new system. The new system, which was a compromise designed by committee and provided by the lowest bidder, was probably obsolete before it was fielded because it took so long to implement. And the cycle starts all over again.

The logisticians who use the system are resigned to its quirks and know the work-arounds to get the most out of it. Anyone else who comes in expecting to turn it on and go is likely in for a rude shock.

The military is one of a few fields well known for using outdated systems. COBOL, for example, would be as dead as Sumerian if not for military, government, and banking systems being stuck in it. The data is formatted for it, so the existing code remains in use, so the data remains formatted for it.

[Black Leviathan]

In my pretty limited Military Experience, every supply section of a base or supply-oriented location has three things if nothing else.

It has a dusty storage area about the size of a small warehouse full of decommissioned equipment that can't be unloaded on anyone. WW 2 Radar Systems, MREs 30 years out of date, Cases of used Fatigues that aren't regulation anymore. There's so much of this stuff in any base that it's climbing the walls in back rooms. There will additionally be a room that's exclusively base equipment that has nowhere to go, desks-stacked-on-desks going back to WW1, portraits of former presidents, defunct state or core flags.

It has files, so many files, 5+ years of records of everything that has ever happened in that base, correspondence, service records, every transfer of every chicken wing. Rooms full of paper files.

It has multi-purpose rooms that serve no purpose. Just all of these empty rooms that aren't quite big enough for an event hall but maybe uncomfortably large for a meeting, that aren't being used for storage or office space. Sometimes the rooms have been temporarily purposed for something to entertain troops but often it's a giant carpeted room with a stack of UPS boxes just inside the door that were supposed to be returned to sender years ago.